that's our context, that's the tools, somewhat arbitrarily, we're going to use as we're going to use the tools of religious studies to try to develop these worldview analysis skills so that we can come to the clearest possible understanding about very diverse set of religions. we're not pretending in this class. it's not a world religion class in that if it's tuesday, it must be buddhism. we're not going to pretend in this class that at the end of 15 weeks we've memorized all the doctrines of the great world traditions. something more fundamental is going on, i hope, as we move on our journey together and that will be to gain this perspective of identity and all those key questions, meaning, purpose, life, death and see how that relates to the relationship of people around us in various cultures, and hopefully, with those skills, you can then go an apply them to buddhism, if you're interested in it, or to islam, or to hinduism and we will ask those great traditions, judaism, to help us understand the six dimensions of religion, which we'll go over in the next class. so, in a nutshell